Honey-Iced Coffee Cake

Coffee Honey Iced Cake

 This easy to do cake is a must for all coffee lovers. It is a no frills, one bowl quick mix cake. It turns out nice and soft with a beautiful flavour of Coffee. The icing is a must if you want to enjoy the flavours of the recipe, for the icing compliments the cake.

Ingredients (for Cake)
4 Tsp instant Coffee
1 Tbsp hot water
125 g butter
2 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup brown sugar (firmly packed) {can be replaced with regular sugar but the flavour is much better if you use brown sugar}
2 eggs
1 cup self raising flour (self raising flour is all purpose flour or maida with baking powder added in the ratio of 2 tsp baking powder to 1 cup of flour, sieve it together to mix both well)
1/4 cup custard powder
1/3 cup milk.
Remember to have all ingredients at room temperature.

Ingredients (for Honey icing)
30g butter
1 tsp instant coffee
1 tbsp hot water
1 tsp honey
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup icing sugar (you can also use regular sugar ground to a powder, but icing sugar gives a better texture)

Method
Dissolve coffee in hot water, combine in a large bowl with butter, vanilla essence, sugar, eggs, flour and custard powder and milk. Beat on a low speed till all ingredients are combined and then increase the speed to medium and beat for another 3-4 minutes or until the mixture is smooth and changed in colour.

I have a philips electric beater which I use for all my cakes and a microwave with a convection mode which gives excellent results for all kind of cakes and breads.

Grease your pan (for the quantity mentioned here you will need a 20 cm ring pan or round pan). Preheat your oven to 190degC / moderate / 375 deg F.

Spread the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake at 190 deg C for about 40 min. Check using toothpick technique to see if the cake is done. Once done, let it cool for 5 min before taking it out of the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack.

For the Icing - melt butter in a saucepan, remove from heat, stir in coffee (mixed with water), honey, vanilla essence and half the icing sugar. Gradually sift in the remaining icing sugar to mix to a spreadable consistency.

Spread icing and the cake is ready. Butter icing works best when slightly warm.

We garnished the cake with some roasted coffee beans on top and they provide a good crunchy coffee flavour.